[oom] see right through my walls

[nerves_of_ice]

As T'Challa stares at the hologram in the palm of his hand, he can already feel the headache forming. "She what? No. Never mind. Bring her to me in the throne room, when she arrives. I will deal with her myself."

He clears the image, then taps the Kimoyo Bead again. "Nakia. I need you."

* * * * * * * * *

"You cannot be serious."

"I don't see why this is a problem. You brought Everett Ross here--"

"Ross was dying! And he was never allowed to know that the man he was seeking was here! Nakia, I have made a promise to protect him."

"She is not a threat. Not to him."

"I will be the judge of that."

Nakia throws up her hands. "Fine. You will see. I hope it does not bother you that I stay and watch?"

T'Challa smiles. "Of course not."

Comments

[from_the_outside]

Well. That's what she gets for not being specific.

So she listens, still pale, still steady, as he details the horrifying fight between him and Tony and Steve, and her heart breaks a little more every sentence for each of them.

She thinks of Tony in Berlin, how he looked like he was barely holding himself together, the strain of trying to keep his family together. And she thinks of Steve, tries to imagine him without the shield Howard Stark made for him so long ago.

But most of all, she feels each of Bucky's statements like a hit to her own body. His arm, ripped off his body. Down on the ground. The pain of knowing Steve would die for him.

Her throat works, but she stays calm even as her fingers twist together between her knees. "He stopped Zemo from getting away?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods, still staring into the clear Wakandan sky.

"Turns out he'd tailed Stark. No one knew about the technology they have here, not then. Stark never knew he was there. He followed him all the way into the facility. He heard everything Zemo had to say -- then slipped back outside, and waited for him."

His lips twist, settling into something that's a bare excuse for an awful, thin wry line of what might be meant as a smile.

"He didn't appreciate being used, either."

Bucky draws a careful breath, and wipes the back of his hand across his forehead, then finally looks back at Sharon.

"He told us what he'd heard; that he knew everything. He apologized to me."

The disbelief is clear in his voice.

"He told us about what they could do here in Wakanda. Offered me sanctuary and help. Promised that if I'd -- that if we'd trust him, he and his sister would make sure no one could ever use me like that again."

[from_the_outside]

"And then Steve broke into the Raft and got Sam out," she says, softly. "That was in the papers."

She gets up from the makeshift seat and comes over to him, reaching to put a gentle hand on his arm. "I'm sorry for making you relive all that again," she says, looking up into his face with solemn eyes.

"But thank you for telling me. I had no idea."

It's...a lot to absorb.

[nerves_of_ice]

"He got them all out. Except Natasha - she got away before they could take her in the first place. But he wouldn't leave any of them behind."

As she touches him, she'll find that every muscle in his body is tense, but he looks down at her and doesn't try to pull away.

"You deserved to know."

[from_the_outside]

She nods but says nothing, and after a moment she takes her hand from his arm and just looks up at him, thoughtful.

"T'Challa takes that promise of his pretty seriously," she says, although she's sure he's already aware. "He wasn't very happy when a Task Force agent showed up on his doorstep looking for you. I guess he didn't know I was an ex-Task Force agent, but I'm honestly not sure it would have made a difference.

"I'm really glad you and Steve decided to trust him."

[nerves_of_ice]

"He does. Steve warned him that if anyone found out I was here, they'd come after me," Bucky tells her.

"He said, 'Let them try.'"

Bucky sighs, a little, as the corner of his mouth twists into a wry expression.

"Honestly, at that point, I'd have gone anywhere, done anything, if it gave Steve a safe place to land. And I'm guessing Steve felt the same way about me. It wasn't until after we were here that I really began to believe T'Challa meant it. All of it."

[from_the_outside]

"It seems like you two managed to catch up a little bit, at least. Berlin to Siberia, Siberia to Wakanda...those are some long flights."

And there was no mistaking their ease with each other on the call last night. Her smile is small but warm. "He must be so happy to finally have you back."

[nerves_of_ice]

His expression settles into something more peaceful - not resigned, but accepting.

"I told him I wouldn't run again."

Bucky slants a look at Sharon. "I also told him about Franche-Comté. And Thessaloniki. I didn't want him to think you were in the habit of lying to him."

[from_the_outside]

"Even though I kind of am?" she says, dry.

"I hope you didn't try to take the blame for that, at least."

[nerves_of_ice]

His eyes narrow. He leaves her second observation unaddressed.

"You mean were."

[from_the_outside]

She frowns at him, slightly.

"Okay. Yes. I was in the habit of lying to him."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Okay."

He relaxes a little at that, even as he informs her,

"You were operating on a strict need-to-know basis with an extremely wary, high-risk intelligence contact that you couldn't chance vanishing off the map entirely."

[from_the_outside]

Her expression flattens.

"...So you did try to take the blame."

[nerves_of_ice]

He just looks at her.

"If you'd called Steve after France, and told him you were in touch with me? I'd have disappeared again. You know that, right?"

He's pretty sure he would have, anyway. No matter how intrigued he'd been.

[from_the_outside]

"Of course."

She's studying him with a mix of wry exasperation and understanding. "But I still made the choice not to tell him. And I kept choosing not to tell him.

"And you know that I was perfectly comfortable with continuing not to tell him. If we'd actually made it to Tirana, I would have passed along the intel and told him with a straight face that I had no other contact with you. The only person who made the call for me to lie was me. And I thought it was worth it."

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head as she mentions Tirana, but doesn't say anything about it.

"Anyway. I told him. He understood." He sounds wry as he adds, "Which you could tell when you saw him yesterday, I figure."

[from_the_outside]

"Mm."

She's reasonably sure that after everything they'd gone through, Steve would be willing to forgive quite a bit.

After a second: "You didn't tell him about Leipzig, though, did you." She would put money on it, that he either said nothing about it at all or glossed over so much he might as well have just made something up.

He might have told Steve they'd made plans for another mission, but she's willing to bet that's all he'd have said.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Not in detail," he says, quietly. "I told him that I'd been planning another mission, and that I'd approached you about it."

You could have come to me, Steve had replied, and the guilt had threatened, as always, to drown him. They'd already made you a target once, he'd answered. I couldn't trust myself with you. I couldn't risk it.

Silence, between them, broken by only the low hum of the plane.

She's a hell of a woman, Steve. She'll be okay.

I know.

Here in the present, he meets her eyes.

"I didn't tell him anything that would get in the way of the two of you."

[from_the_outside]

She eyes him for a long second. He's not far at all from the water's edge; she could shove him into the lake with just one good push, probably.

"Oh, good." It's dry as the Sahara, and now her exasperation is back in full force. "That is just ducky."

He is so set on this, but he hasn't bargained on one thing: she may have given in on a few lesser issues, but she is not losing this fight.

[nerves_of_ice]

He shrugs, and says nothing.

[from_the_outside]

She takes a deep breath through her nose and lets it out again, and when she opens her mouth, her voice is calm.

The kind of calm right before a tornado smashes through and levels a small town, anyway.

"Did you know that in all your worrying about what Steve wants or what you should do, you have completely neglected to ask me – arguably the one with the most important opinion on this whole mess! – what I want?"

Her eyes narrow. "Or does it not matter?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Of course it matters."

His answering tone is slightly more wary, at least to judge from the way he's looking at her now, but still even.

"That's why I asked you to think about it."

[from_the_outside]

"So then why are you acting like this is some kind of foregone conclusion?"

He's infuriating; she throws up her hands and stalks to the edge of the lake, shaking her head at the water before she can look back at him. "You keep pushing me at him like I'm some kind of prize he gets to win, and I resent it, Bucky! Is that really how you want this to happen?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"That's not what I'm doing."

She's mad, he can tell, and ignores the simmering something that's beginning to burn inside him to try to explain, instead.

"I'm not pushing you anywhere. I'm telling you what I said to him. Or didn't say, rather, at a time when I thought you already had made a choice, and it was him."

[from_the_outside]

She levels him with a flat stare: she's not just talking about this one instance, and he knows it.

Or he should, if he doesn't. "Well, I hadn't."

Steve had kissed her, not the other way around. And sure, there had been a few moments – more than a few – when she'd started to think maybe she would change her mind. "And I hope you stretch before you do all this jumping to conclusions, or else you're going to hurt yourself."